Bang

There's no such thing as The Next Big Thing anymore. Food trends are now so many and varied (smokehouse, yakitori, ceviche, yada yada) that it's more about lots of Small To Medium Things instead. And the next small to medium thing is Indian street food.

It's happened in Melbourne already, with Horn Please, Babu Ji and Adam D'Sylva's brilliant Tonka, but Sydney is catching up fast (as it does). Bang has opened upstairs in Crown Street, Surry Hills, to be closely followed by Subcontinental, Sam Christie's cavernous basement space under Longrain.

Bang is a joint effort between Farmhouse founder Nicholas Gurney, an interior designer with a fine eye for street style, and head chef Tapos Singha, formerly of est and Gowings Bar and Grill, who was born in Sylhet, Bangladesh.

With drinks called Man Eating Tiger, $32 main courses and desserts such as rum-drunk doughnuts, this is not your average curry den. The small upstairs dining room wraps itself around a central bar and one end of a buzzy kitchen; the "Bang" brand extended to colourful staff T-shirts and clever, graphic plates bearing a G, N, A or B.

A paper cone of sand-roasted peanuts lands on the table without explanation; the $2 automatically added to your bill will go to the Fred Hollows Foundation in Bangladesh. Other street snacks run from a serve of soft and squishy Bombay chops of deep-fried mashed potato ($8) to crisp, golden bhaji ($8), kale fritters served with a beautifully sweet-sour tomato and coconut chutney based on the chef's mum's recipe. Dhal puri ($6), cute little roti puffs filled with spiced lentils, are a must.

What sounds like a tangy, tantalising som tum salad (paw paw, green mango, snake beans and young coconut, $18) is nothing of the sort, the paw paw being ripe, and the dressing bland. A duck egg omelette ($23) generously studded with blue swimmer crab, chilli and grape tomatoes is rich without being spicy, as is a midden of carefully cooked mussels ($34), sympathetically flavoured with garlic, chilli, curry leaf and a pool of lightly coconut-creamy bhuna curry sauce built on a base of garlic, ginger and shallots. A smoothly balanced wagyu tri-tip curry ($32) steps up the action with great depth and density of flavour in both the slow-braised beef and its glossy coating sauce. It's zipped up with satkora, a semi-wild citrus fruit that does for Bengali food what kaffir lime does for Thai food.

Bang has bravely opted to run with an all-Portuguese wine list, as a point of difference and as a nod to the first Europeans to discover the subcontinent. If you're doing the wagyu, then the 2013 Filipa Pato Baga ($14/$78), a ripe, soft, juicy red from Portugal's Bairrada region is good with it.

Ending on kulfi was always going to be on the cards, and Bang's sweetly creamy mango ice-cream ($11) comes on a stick, with grated white chocolate and pistachio crumbs.

A biriyani of goat came across as something heavy and reheated rather than light, and there's not much warmth on the floor, but most of the cooking here is good. The basics are excellent, from the basket of hot, toasty naan bread ($6) to the lovely aromatic pulao rice ($6). I was hoping for a bit more fire, spice, and that magical Bengali mustard oil - more Bangladeshiness, in other words, and less Surry Hillsiness. Still, Bang is a fun place to immerse yourself in the next small to medium thing.

THE LOW-DOWN
Best bit: Lassis that can be laced with rum.
Worst bit: The staff's tiger-print tees look like full-body tatts.
Go-to dish: Wagyu tri-tip curry, satkora $32

Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.